Vancouver Photos Part Two

As promised, here are some more photos from Vancouver.  First is a pulled pork and mac and cheese sandwich, which was reportedly delicious.

Next:  this is how they snort Coke in Vancouver!

Here is some graffiti aimed at the rioters:

And this is some very cool graffit:

And a close-up:

Why don't we have these here?  Bicycle stop and go lights!

And I love this cemetery sign:

And here are some more scenery shots:

Finally, on a touching note, a tribute to veterans of both World Wars:

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Vancouver Photos Part One

This is going to be a two-part post: photos of Toque McToque's Vancouver vacation!  This part is scenery, buildings, and fauna/flora. Tomorrow: food and and interesting signs!

First, here are some scenery shots:

And a couple of sculptures:

And here are some cool buildings.  The first one is the libarary.  No idea what the second one is, it is just very cute.  The third one is a Russian Orthodox church with a crow sitting on the cross.

And here are some flora shots.  First, a dogwood.

Then a couple of shots of a variegated maple:

And some poppies:

And here is a heron:

Come back tomorrow for more exciting pictures of Vancouver, including anti-riot graffiti.

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Garden Photos and Mysteries

Here are some photos from Rich's garden.  This is the last rose blooming on his bush; guess I was too late because even it is past its prime.  

My lilies have tons of buds but are not blooming yet.  However, the lilies that Kathbert brought back from Mombert's house are putting on a spectacular show, even if this photo doesn't quite do them justice.

The hostas in the front yard bloom purple.

One of my calla lilies is about to open, and I believe it is going to be white.

And now that we have cleared away all the Virginia creeper, we can see that the row of honeysuckle bushes bloom white.

Technically wooly mullein is a weed, but it's too cool to pull out.

Representing the vegetables, here is the zucchini plant in bloom.

When Kathbert cleared away a bunch of Virginia creeper, she discovered a patch of lily of the valley hidden below.

Now for some mystery plants.  If anyone can identify one (or more) of these, please let me know.  The first one was hidden near the lilies of the valley and looks a little like a strawberry, but I'm not sure that is actually what it is.

What is this adorable little seedling?  Is it a baby redbud?  A baby lilac?

There is a larger example in the front of this photo, and I would also like to know what the lovely purple shrub is.  Anyone recognize it?

Here are a couple of ground covers.  The first one was growing feral in my neighborhood, but I am quite sure it is not a weed.  It gets little star-shaped yellow flowers on it.

This second one was being thrown out by a neighbor.  Hope it wasn't a mistake for me to rescue it!  Is it going to take over everything?  I thought it was such a pretty chartreuse.

Feel free to tell me in the comments what these plants might be.  Thanks!

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And Then Came Leo

I was not always the sign-crazed astrology buff my 6.8 readers know; once I was an innocent child who lived in the 70’s, when it was perfectly normal to have a wastebasket with the signs of the Zodiac emblazoned on it in psychedelic colors. I LOVED that wastebasket (which is long gone, and I can find nothing like it on eBay, can you believe that?) but I didn’t really understand what it was, something about pictures in the stars and I was the mergoat one called Capricorn. I was vaguely aware my brother was the fishy one called Pisces and my dad (who of course had to explain that all their names came from Latin) was the two people called Gemini – BORING!! (I preferred animals) – and my mom was another goat. But for reasons I cannot explain, the only other sign I was really aware of was Leo. Why, I don’t know. Because lions are cool?

I was considered one of those “smart” kids and had to go to honors classes, which meant we got to leave school and do slightly more interesting things. Once when I was about eleven we went to a planetarium, which of course was way cool, and beforehand the director was asking what we knew about astronomy. He asked us to name the constellations in the Zodiac and I said, “Capricorn,” and he said yes, that is the first one (which is technically not true, Aries is), so I looked all brilliant and stuff. Buoyed by my success, I continued to guess that the next constellation was Leo, but oh my goodness there sure are a lot of signs between Capricorn and Leo! Finally I gave up, and just then the director looked right at me and said, “And what do you think the NEXT one is?” so in a tiny little voice I guessed, “Leo?” And I was finally right. And then… there were still even more after that! What?? And I got hung up on the question of what Libra the Scales has to do with libraries, which the adults dealt with in their usual manner, by ignoring me. So I went home and asked my mom, who got me a big book about astrology from the LIBRAry, and the rest is history.


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Rich Talks Church: The Video

Rich and I were unable to extract his three-minute speech from the four-plus hour video of the Planning Commission meeting, so I did the next-best thing and made an Xtranormal video. Most of the gestures are pretty accurate but I had to fudge a few of them. Rich really does wear this suit and tie a lot (but not to the meeting). The background celebrates his recent trip to Alaska. (But he didn't actually get to the North Pole.) And his hair even kind of looks like this.

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Rich Talks Church

Last night there was a city council meeting regarding whether a second Giant Student Apartment Building could be built right next to the Lutheran church where I sing. Just a couple of years ago they were strong-armed into allowing another Giant Student Apartment Building to be built right behind them, and they have regretted it ever since. Noise, traffice, drunk students hurling pumpkins at the bell tower... gee, what's not to love? So, as you can well imagine, the Lutherans were not one bit happy to learn that the Episcopalians next door wanted to sell part of their land to a developer.  More students throwing more pumpkins and, as an added bonus, this Giant Student Apartment Building would block morning sunlight from flowing through the church's stained glass windows.  Kathbert encouraged Richard Bonomo and me to attend the city council meeting (although she did not attend herself), and Rich gave the following incredibly moving speech which I have only edited a tiny bit for clarity and changed proper names to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent:

I come before you as a counterfeit this evening. I am sitting among the Lutherans who have been referred to but I am not a Lutheran. I am a Roman Catholic. I am in no way affiliated with Lutheran Cathedral of the West or with the Episcopal ministry next door to it. I am an engineer; I work for Hardnox University, where I manage a small nuclear fusion laboratory. I am a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety Catholic Church downtown, and I’m the volunteer building and maintenance supervisor as well. Our churches are in similar situations in that we are downtown churches with a lot of people who come from elsewhere to worship. We’re also in a similar situation in another way which has not been talked about quite as much, in that church buildings are traditionally, especially older ones, built to last. Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety, the current church has been there since 1869 and a masonry expert tells me that the building could last fifteen hundred years, at least the masonry part of the building. So, barring calamity, Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety will be there long after we’re gone, long after political boundaries have changed, who knows what. I believe we’re faced with a similar situation with Lutheran Cathedral of the West. Lutheran Cathedral was built in the Twenties, and they knew how to build churches back then. You’re looking at a building which, besides being stunningly beautiful, and built with a Gothic design which graces our campus wonderfully, has the capacity to be there for many, many centuries. But that building is meaningless without a congregation. There are a number of churches in town which no longer have congregations. They’ve become restaurants or some such thing. It’s kind of sad, actually. This must not happen to this beautiful church. Many people from this congregation have spoken to you, and they have told you in plain terms that their experience with Giant Student Apartment Building has been a bad experience. Listen to them. More of the same is not good for the congregation of Lutheran Cathedral. Lutheran Cathedral, like Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety, brings in a lot of people from the outside, and both churches serve the student population as well. These ministries do cross over in many respects. I happen to know from personal contact with the people at Lutheran Cathedral that there is a substantial student involvement there. They run a world-class choir, and a lot of the people who are in that choir are in fact affiliated with the university in one way or another. Lutheran Cathedral is an integral part of the university community, provides a wonderful break from the other buildings on campus, and is a monument to religion in the middle of our campus. Also, please bear in mind that the Chemistry Building next door will disappear at some point, Giant Student Apartment Building will probably collapse within two hundred years and be replaced by something else, but Lutheran Cathedral, God willing, will still be there one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, five hundred years… provided every generation makes the right decisions to preserve it. This is a gem. Do nothing – NOTHING – to threaten its existence.  Thank you.

Well said, Rich!  The good news is that the city council voted to reject the proposal as is, meaning the developers have to make changes.  Hopefully this will kill the whole thing.  Prayers for our Lutheran brothers and sisters would be very welcome right now.

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GOOD NEWS!!!

I have some fabulous news to report today - my supervisor FOX is going to guard a different henhouse!!  In one of those strokes of irony that suffuse my entire life, FOX is going to guard the very henhouse I ran away from lo these three years past.  Perhaps FOX figured I would not follow anyone there!  In this FOX is correct, but I cannot imagine choosing to follow FOX anywhere, so FOX was always quite safe in that regard.  So hubie got demoted and FOX is leaving!!  I'm doing my Happy Dance - Guaguanco!

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When It Doesn't Stay in Vegas: Squeaky-Clean Version

For those of you who did not enjoy the true story of what happened in Vegas, I have prepared a fictional but clean account of what transpired:

Savannah Hope (name still courtesy of Astrochick) frowned to herself in concern. Three days earlier the palms of her husband’s hands had appeared yellowish, and each day they had grown ever darker and browner. Chauncey Hope claimed nothing had changed in his daily routine, so Savannah, who suffered greatly from valetudinarianism, worried that his liver was failing, or possibly his kidneys. What else could explain such a strange color change to such a localized part of his skin?

They were at a dinner party with several other couples at a local Chinese restaurant. The waiter set Savannah’s drink in front of her and she picked it up and sipped at it moodily. It went by the wondrous appellation of Scorpio Rising and consisted of multicolored bands of alcohol in a foot-tall dragon-shaped glass, with all manner of paper umbrellas and flowers bristling from the top. She thought to herself about what she might need to purchase if they stopped at a drugstore on the way home, and once again she puzzled about the way her self-tanning lotion had suddenly decreased in volume in the last few days. She certainly had not been using any more than was necessary to keep up her healthy orange glow, and she doubted the cat was indulging in it. Which left Chauncey…

Savannah set her drink down with a definitive smack and hollered, “You son of a gun!” at Chauncey. He and the other members of the dinner party regarded her with surprise. She continued: “You’ve been using my self-tanning lotion to varnish your boat, haven’t you? And here I was so worried about you!”

Chauncey looked shocked and replied, “Is that what that is??  No wonder my boat has that orange glow!”

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Reasonable Rabbit Requests

Did you ever have a neighbor you had never met personally, and yet you felt as if you knew everything about them? There is a crazy old lady in my neighborhood who has an adult male cat she always talks to very loudly as if he were a naughty five-year-old boy. This cat has a distinctly unmanly name (let’s say Yancy), and I couldn’t help thinking that if I were that cat and had to listen to the old lady constantly carping at me, “Yancy, sit down! Yancy, stay put!” then I would go totally cat-insane, whatever that looks like. It would seem Yancy did have similar feelings, because a few days ago he ran away. Then I felt bad about my nasty thoughts, because how would I feel if my rabbits ran away from home? As if he were reading my mind, Charlie ran over and started snuggling me while outside we could hear the crazy old lady hollering, “Yancy! Yaaaaancy!”

So maybe my bunnies would not abandon me even if they could, but that got me to thinking about their list of demands, if they should ever learn to write. I mean, these are some tough rabbits – Charlie has a tattoo and Cashmere has tried to kill several of us – so I don’t want to get on their bad side!

To: The Human

From: The Rabbits

Re: Reasonable Requests

1. Daily bananas. This shouldn’t be that hard. They sell them at any grocery store. It’s not like we’re asking for starfruit here, but hey, as long as you’re at the grocery store, check and see if they have any.

2. Charlie requests no less than one hour of snuggling per day.

3. Cashmere requests that you no longer try to pass off vegetables as “food.” They are not edible, like say electrical cords and yoga mats, even if Charlie insists on eating them.

4. Would you CLEAN THE LITTERBOX already!

5. Stop doing secret stuff like solving word game puzzles, praying the rosary, reading murder mysteries, etc. You know how it drives us NUTS when you are really interested in something and we can’t tell why!

6. Phone conversations shall be limited to ten minutes. Any longer than that and we will resort to our usual protest method of sitting on your feet.

7. You must stay home at least three evenings a week. This is not too much to ask. After all, you have to get that hour of snuggling in with Charlie, and Cashmere likes being able to stare at you, even if she doesn’t particularly want to have anything to do with you. Come on, she lets you hold her for two minutes at least once a month.

8. Sylvia says stop using the kitchen. OK, we think maybe that’s a little drastic, but she’s a hedgehog. Drastic is all she knows.

9. Quit going out on the balcony to take care of the plants. If you needed to take care of them, you should have kept them inside. And why do you care if Cashmere likes to munch on them, anyway? You’re always getting on her case about not eating fresh food, and what could be fresher than your asparagus fern?

10. We don’t actually have ten demands. We’re reasonable rabbits.

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Love and Rioting in Vancouver

On more than one occasion, a huge news story that happened far away touched me on a personal level.  I was a schoolgirl during the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and our class had penpals in the nearby city of Prypiat.  Mine was a boy named Viktor.  We never heard from them again; I hope they were just evacuated and didn't die or something.  Viktor, if you happen to be reading this, drop me a line.

Then there was the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 when I came to work and heard about the World Trade Center.  To the rest of my coworkers, it was a tragic but distant story, but my uncle worked at the World Trade Center so I was frantically trying to get a hold of him.  Turns out he had a doctor's appointment that morning and was nowhere near the disaster, but it was a scary couple of hours.

And now that they are rioting in Vancouver because the Bruins beat the Canucks, I have a reporter at the scene.  OK, Toque McToque may be in the city, but she wisely avoided all the insanity.  I think this photo*, which is all over the internet (I borrowed it from Huffingtonpost.com) sums up the Vancouver riots better than any first-person narrative anyway:

Because what could be more romantic than your city going up in flames?  That's the best aphrodisiac of all!  And they say Americans are crazy...  Hey, at least we can beat Canadians at hockey.  So there.

* As far as I know, that is not Toque and her hubby in this photo.

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When It Doesn't Stay in Vegas

Sometimes what happens in Vegas does not stay there but winds its way to Wisconsin.  This is a true story Light Bright told me about a couple who live in Sin City. I have embellished some details to protect the guilty, but the gist of the story actually happened:

Savannah Hope (LOVE that name, I “borrowed” it from a story Astrochick wrote) frowned to herself in concern. Three days earlier the palms of her husband’s hands had appeared yellowish, and each day they had grown ever darker and browner. Chauncey Hope claimed nothing had changed in his daily routine, so Savannah, who suffered greatly from valetudinarianism, worried that his liver was failing, or possibly his kidneys. What else could explain such a strange color change to such a localized part of his skin?

They were at a dinner party with several other couples at a local Chinese restaurant. The waiter set Savannah’s drink in front of her and she picked it up and sipped at it moodily. It went by the wondrous appellation of Scorpio Rising and consisted of multicolored bands of alcohol in a foot-tall dragon-shaped glass, with all manner of paper umbrellas and flowers bristling from the top. She thought to herself about what she might need to purchase if they stopped at a drugstore on the way home, and once again she puzzled about the way her self-tanning lotion had suddenly decreased in volume in the last few days. She certainly had not been using any more than was necessary to keep up her healthy orange glow, and she doubted the cat was indulging in it. Which left Chauncey…

Savannah set her drink down with a definitive smack and hissed, “You son of a b$@#*!” at Chauncey. He and the other members of the dinner party regarded her with surprise. She continued: “You’ve been using my self-tanning lotion to pleasure yourself, haven’t you?  And here I was so worried about you!”

Chauncey looked shocked, not to say guilty, and replied, “Is that what that is??”

No report on whether other parts of Chauncey were also self-tanned….

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Fairy Tale Cupcake Weekend

Friday night I went to a Cajun jam session with Hardingfele, Mr. Hardingfele, and Rockstar Tailor. The jam was in a small town nearby, and their town festival was prominently advertised, but we could not find it anywhere. How, I ask you, are they able to hide an entire festival in a tiny little town?

Saturday Rich got two things off his Bucket List: going to Alaska and eating at the Peruvian restaurant near his house. In the evening a bunch of us went to a bonfire at a county park, and Rich was so tired from his Alaska trip that he fell asleep in front of the fire. Meanwhile, the fire tender had run off to the latrine, and the rest of us had gone up the hill to the chapel and scenic overlook, and a couple of us were playing the violin. Just then Luxuli and her husband arrived at the bonfire, and he was not impressed by the party: one guy asleep in front of the fire? What a happening Saturday night! But they could hear us playing the violin, so they came up the hill too and found the real party.

Sunday my ladies in the Hubby Hunters and I went for a walk as we prayed the rosary, since it was such a beautiful day. (OK Cap did not join us because she had broken her hand. Get better soon, OK Cap!) Then we went to a nearby cupcake shop and sat outside at a bright pink table while eating our huge cupcakes that were practically more frosting than cake. Luxuli said, “I feel like I’m living in a fairy tale!”

Rich’s rose has finally bloomed, and it is white or maybe very pale shell pink. Anyway, it is beautiful. The corn Hardingfele gave me has sprouted, but not the carrots, squash, or pumpkins. All the lilies have buds on them so hopefully very soon I will have some spectacular photos to post here. Meanwhile you will have to make do with the second best photo ever taken of me:

Actually, this is the third best, but I am afraid to post the second best one since it involves a weapon.
 
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Rich's Tent

Here is a bonus Alaska post for you:  Rich's tent all over Alaska!

Living room of the Arctic Adventure Hostel

Nancy Lake

Exit Glacier with raised gravel bed

Anchor Point

Russian Lake (with shotgun)

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